Month: June 2016

High Noon

High Moon: Werewolf Western Comic

Created by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis, High Moon was part of Zuda’s initial launch in October 2007. In November 2007, High Moon was awarded a contract with DC Comics, where the strip was serialized on Zuda.com. Scott O. Brown is the production artist and letterer. Serialization ended when Zuda Comics shut down in 2010.

A bounty hunter, Matthew Macgregor, investigates a series of strange happenings in the Texas town of Blest, where drought has brought famine and hardship to most of the town and surrounding ranches. Additionally, the nights are haunted by werewolves. While Macgregor, a former Pinkerton detective, seeks to uncover the town’s secrets, he tries desperately to keep secret his own past steeped in witchcraft and the supernatural.

Djinn

Artists Unknown, Djinn

According to pre-Islamic lore, the djinn are born of smokeless fire (which in modern terms could be plasma). They live very long lives but they are not immortal.  According to some accounts, they live with other supernatural beings in the Kaf, a mythical range of emerald mountains that encircles the Earth.  In modern terms, they live in a parallel dimension.

The djinn like to roam the deserts and wilderness and inhabit caves. They are usually invisible, but have the power to shape-shift to any form, be it insect, animal, human, or entity. They have long been regarded as malicious and dangerous, capable of bringing bad luck, illness, disaster and death. Even when granting favors, they have a trickster nature and can twist events for the worse.

Though the djinn can be conjured in magical rites, they are difficult to control. One individual said to have complete power over the djinn was the legendary Biblical King Solomon. God gave Solomon a copper and iron magic ring that enabled him to subdue djinn, and which protected him from their powers. In some accounts, the ring was inscribed with a pentacle, and in other accounts it was set with a gem, probably a diamond, that had a living force of its own. With the ring, Solomon branded the necks of the djinn as his slaves and set them to working building the first Temple of Jerusalem and even the entire city of Jerusalem.

Yugoslavia: Abandoned Monuments

Abandoned Monuments in Yugoslavia

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (such as Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic.

In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their “patriotic education.” After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost. Their physical dilapidated condition and institutional neglect reflect a general social historical fracturing. On the other hand, they are still of stunning beauty without any symbolic significances.

Canal Boats

Small Houses: Canal boat in Amsterdam

The Charlotte Johanna first set sail in 1908, transporting freight along the inland waterways connecting Western Europe. A little over a century later, it was converted into a floating home and is now moored on the Prinsengracht canal in central Amsterdam.

A canalside gangplank leads to the main entry into the boat’s wheelhouse, which is used as a lounge. From there, a steep stair descends into what was once the cargo hold but is now a comfortable living space. The original cargo hold doors were replaced with skylights, making the below-deck space surprisingly sunny and helping to counteract the low ceiling.

What does it cost to live aboard a barge in Amsterdam? According to one source, moorage in Amsterdam runs about EUR 200 monthly. Annual maintenance can cost anywhere from EUR 1,000 to 3,000. That doesn’t include a haul out every few years to have the hull cleaned of rust and repainted, which will set you back about EUR 2,000–3,000. While the boat is in dry dock, a marine surveyor can inspect the hull for soundness, giving you peace of mind at a cost of up to EUR 700. So not including your electric bill and any mortgage payment, you’re probably looking at around EUR 350-550 monthly.

The Gallery Visitor

Photographyer Unknown, (Ginger Guy at the Gallery)

“Some people spend their entire lives thinking about one particular famous person. They pick one person who’s famous, and they dwell on him or her. They devote almost their entire consciousness to thinking about this person they’ve never even met, or maybe met once. If you ask any famous person about the kind of mail they get, you’ll find that almost every one of them has at least one person who’s obsessed with them and writes constantly. It feels so strange to think that someone is spending their whole time thinking about you.”

― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Aztec Sun Stone

Aztec Sun Stone, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

The Aztec Sun Stone (or Calendar Stone) depicts the five consecutive worlds of the sun from Aztec mythology. The stone is not, therefore, in any sense a functioning calendar, but rather it is an elaborately carved solar disk, which for the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures represented rulership. At the top of the stone is a date glyph (13 reed) which represents both the beginning of the present sun, the 5th and final one according to mythology, and the actual date 1427 CE, thereby legitimizing the rule of Itzcoatl and creating a bond between the divine and mankind.

The stone was discovered in December 1790 CE in the central plaza of Mexico City and now resides in the National Museum of Anthropology in that city. The richly carved basalt stone was once a part of the architectural complex of the Temple Mayor and measures 3.58 metres in diameter, is 98 centimetres thick, and weighs 25 tons. The stone would originally have been laid flat on the ground and possibly anointed with blood sacrifices.

Henry Scott Tuke

Henry Scott Tuke, “Sunbathers”, Oil on Canvas, Date Unknown

In 1874 Tuke moved to London, where at the age of 16, he enrolled in the Slade School of Art. It was in Falmouth that the young Tuke had been introduced to the pleasures of nude sea bathing, a habit he continued into old age. After graduating he travelled to Italy in 1880, and from 1881 to 1883 he lived in Paris, where he studied with the French history painter Jean-Paul Laurens and met the American painter John Singer Sargent (who was also a painter of male nudes, although this was little known in his lifetime).

During the 1880s Tuke also met Oscar Wilde and other prominent poets and writers such as John Addington Symonds, most of whom were homosexual (then usually called Uranian) and who celebrated the adolescent male. He wrote a “sonnet to youth” which was published anonymously in The Artist, and also contributed an essay to The Studio.

After his death, Tuke’s reputation faded, and he was largely forgotten until the 1970s, when he was rediscovered by the first generation of openly gay artists and art collectors. He has since become something of a cult figure in gay cultural circles, with lavish editions of his paintings published and his works fetching high prices at auctions.

For a more complete biography: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2021/01/03/henry-scott-tuke/

Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Albert Taylor (Age 21) and Henry Scott Tuke (Age 25), Cornwall, England”, 1883, Vintage Print